title: A fast method for spine localization in x-ray images.
abstract: Detection of spines in medical images are important tasks in medical applications. These tasks are relatively easy for CT/MR images because the bones are easily distinguishable from other tissues. However, they are difficult for x-ray images due to bone and soft tissue overlapping. This paper illustrates a method for detecting the medial axis of spine in x-ray images. Given an initial point on the spine in the x-ray image manually or automatically, the method iteratively searches for good feature points on the spine to locate the medial axis. As a result, the effort of determining the relevant medical information, such as Cobb's angle, can be minimized. The proposed method is fast and efficient. In average it took less than 1 second for localizing the spine on a 3000×1000 gray scale x-ray image.
authors.forename: Chao-Hui
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Huang
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D006801:Humans; D013131:Spine / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*; D014965:X-Rays